


more than the dead

by nightbloomingflowers



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Oneshot, Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25618372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomingflowers/pseuds/nightbloomingflowers
Summary: Ahsoka Tano can only watch as a trooper dies in her arms.(He doesn’t even have a name.)
Relationships: Ahsoka Tano & Clone Troopers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	more than the dead

Ahsoka Tano can only watch as a trooper dies in her arms.

(He doesn’t even have a name.)

She has seen death before, too much; witnessed men torn apart by shrapnel and struck down by blaster bolts, felt as their souls left their bodies and joined with the Force.

(Do her troopers join with the Cosmic Force? Will the man dying in her arms remember her, remember his brothers, once he passes on?)

Ahsoka Tano did not realize how cruel the world could be until she watched her troopers die in droves, in ways she could not have imagined even in her worst nightmares back at the Temple. But now her nightmares replay terrible deaths all too often. The nightmares that her Master knows about, tries to console her about, but cannot drive away.

(This trooper has been stuck in the head, chest and leg by pieces of shrapnel. Will he haunt her as well?)

Before leaving the Temple for a new life as a Padawan, Padawan to the Chosen One, Master Yoda had warned her of the cost of war. Had warned her that she would see death, and suffering, and that she would struggle with the Light amongst so much Dark. Ahsoka Tano hadn’t understood until those hours after Teth, after Tatooine, as she learned that 6 ( _only_ _six_ ) members of Torrent Company survived the mission.

(This battle is costly, too. This trooper she holds in her arms is one of many that will die today.)

It was so easy, in the aftermath of Teth, to be angry and hopeless and despairing all at once, and even as the words of Master Yoda rose in her mind, she could not banish the feelings swirling inside.

(Do her emotions make her a bad Jedi? Does her inability to protect this trooper, her helplessness as he passes on, make her a bad Jedi?)

Ahsoka Tano is afraid that she is becoming accustomed to pain and death. Now, watching her men die around her is a part of too many missions. She cannot afford to feel the way she felt after Teth, because there is battle after battle and her men need her to be strong. She is too aware that her troopers don’t have a choice in all of this, that even though she is still a child, she has more power than they do.

(She doesn’t feel powerful. She is powerless to save the man dying in her arms.)

Death is her constant companion in this war, and she knows it intimately. This trooper is not the first and will not be the last to die in her arms as she bears silent witness.

(The trooper’s grasp on her hand is weakening, and she squeezes his hand all the more tightly as he slips away.)

(His helmet is on and so she cannot see the light die in his eyes, but Ahsoka still feels the moment he leaves the living and joins the dead.)

(It hasn’t even been a minute, but she cannot linger any longer, because the battle is still going and the living need her.)

(Ahsoka gently, gently, lets go of her trooper’s hand.)

(She doesn’t want to leave him there, but there is nowhere to bring him, no time to bury him, and the living need her more than the dead.)

**Author's Note:**

> so I wrote this a little bit ago on tumblr (@soplantyourownflowers) and i’m posting it on here now. Have some sadness i’m sorry


End file.
